Orwell’s Rules for Writers

The case for *some* cognitive strain

Raji R
Raji R
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

When it comes to writing, experts advise us to keep it simple. A reader should sail through your writing like she is on a calm river going downhill, they say.

This is good advice, generally speaking. But is it ALWAYS true? What do your customers — aka your readers — want?

I am an avid reader myself. I read many kinds of things — from buzzfeed listicles to lightweight novels to business books to literary fiction. As a customer for other people’s writing I can say that *most* of the time, I want to read “easy stuff”. I have too much going on in my life to spend inordinate time reading difficult writing.

But there are times when I seek out heavier writing. I do this so I can get out of my comfort zone.

There are advantages to getting out of your comfort zone as a reader. For one thing, growth happens outside your comfort zone. Your ability to comprehend and your focus improve. Additionally, behavioral science tells us this is where our neural centers for analytical thinking get engaged. There is where deeper understanding happens.

Daniel Kahneman, in his book on behavioral science — “Thinking fast and slow” — has a name for your state of mind when you’re in your comfort zone: you are experiencing cognitive ease. You feel cognitive ease when you’re comfortable processing information. For example, consider the statements below.

Adolf Hitler was born in 1892

Adolf Hitler was born in 1887

Which one of them is true?

In experiments that showed participants these two statements, the first one was overwhelmingly believed to be true.

Well, in fact, both those statements are false.

More people assume that the statement in bold is true due to their cognitive ease reading it. Clearer, more legible fonts improve cognitive ease. Text that a reader doesn’t “have to think about” improves cognitive ease.

When I experience cognitive ease as a reader, my understanding comes from the auto-pilot regions of my brain. I feel comfortable and familiar. The flip side is that I am also more gullible and easily persuaded.

On the other hand, when I feel cognitive strain, I engage my “deep thinking brain” aka my neocortex. This makes me more skeptical and uncomfortable. But my deeper thinking brain is also where critical thinking happens. It is where my primal biases — ones that cause me to fear, stereotype and jump to conclusions — are broken. While I might lose interest, quit, or feel mistrustful, I will also make less factual errors and retain the content better.

So there are pros and cons to both easy and difficult reading. Bottom line: As a reader, I should not to limit yourself to easy, three minute reads. Just as doing planks keeps my core strong, reading complex writing keeps my cortical regions strong.

Back to you as a writer. What does all this mean for your writing? This means that you should aim to put your readers at cognitive ease most of the time. Behavioral science says that you persuade, inspire, and entertain better with cognitive ease. But this also means that you shouldn’t shy away from breaking your reader’s cruise control occasionally. A few things — statistics, complicated language etc. — that make your audience stop and pay attention will ultimately serve them better.

For a healthy society, our humans should be able to think well and step outside their implicit biases. Is it not our social responsibility — as writers — to write in a way that will increase the level of critical thinking in our world? To do that, inciting a little bit of cognitive strain is not a bad thing to do.

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